Category Archives: Career Development
Decision Making
Author’s note:
I hope everyone is enjoying the build-up to Christmas. This is slowly but surely becoming one of my favorite times of the year. I think it has something to do with the fact that I can get away with whistling Christmas carols without people looking at my funny. In any case, I don’t foresee this being a long article this weekend. I’ve been maxing out at work the last couple of weeks which has minimized my writing time. That being said, I want to keep my weekly pattern going. Last month marked the 1 year anniversary of Bootstraps. I’m so happy with the year’s worth of progress, so happy with myself for sticking with it and most of all I’m so happy for all of you who have been along for the ride with me. If you’ve gotten half as much out of it as I have then it’s been a win/win.
–Decision Making–
Decision making is one of the most important skills that we have, both and work and at home. The ability to make high quality decisions quickly is one of the key traits shared by successful people. It makes me laugh at myself when I say that because it convicts me for the willy-nilly way that I make decisions around the house. At home decisions are typically based on a quick calculation of priority, emergency and effort. In other words:
Do I have to get off the couch? Yes.
Is it an emergency? No.
Ok, I’ll make it a priority later.
Ok, it’s not that bad, well, not all the time. I should probably do something about it, but it doesn’t seem like an emergency, I’ll make sure to get to it later 
.
While our decision making at home can be suspect (re: lazy), we don’t get that luxury at work. The decisions that we make throughout the day at work drive our reputation and ultimately our success. Yet for some people it seems that their process is no more rigorous than flippant way I described my process at home. It doesn’t have to be that way though. There is actually a common factor that can be used to predict good decision making and poor decisions making – Information. Read the rest of this entry
Guest Post
I recently had the opportunity to write a guest spot over at Analyfe.com. I’ve been subscribing to Erin’s posts at Analyfe for a while now. I love her intelligence, her open spirit and her honesty. I encourage you guys to click on over there to read my article and check out Erin’s other work.
Here’s the link http://analyfe.com/2011/10/09/living-in-the-world-that-is-not-the-world-you-wish-it-was/
Enjoy!
Jonathan
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Your Guide to Avoiding Displacement
Displacements are an ugly fact of life in the world of big business. Sometimes they occur because the company has become more efficient or automated a process and rendered some jobs unnecessary. Sometimes it happens because organizations are realigned and redundancy is identified and eliminated. Sometimes it happens simply because the company needs to spend less money to improve their bottom line.
These situations can be unfortunate. Sometimes very good people are caught up in the backdraft and don’t have a chance to save themselves. In many, if not most, cases the people being displaced would have held down their job for years performing at an average level. These are typically not people who would ever be fired; they aren’t bad enough for that.
As a result, this is a very touchy subject. When someone is displaced they do not want to believe that it’s anything they could have prevented. It feels better to believe that they just got caught up in a numbers game. We disagree with that way of thinking here at Bootstraps. Here we believe in growth, we believe in self-development. It’s a harder road, but it is the road to success and the road to fulfillment. The path down this road starts with a simple decision. It’s the decision to take personal responsibility, to be accountable. That means that we look at the good and the bad in life and try to see what we can learn from it. What could we have done differently? What could we have done better that would have led to a different outcome?
The truth is that you have a significant amount of control over whether or not you are displaced. Keep reading and you’ll find 3 things that you can do immediately to increase your chances to staying employed. Before we get there, you may wonder why I believe that we have more control than we think. Read the rest of this entry
Teamwork: Tearing Down the Walls
I had the awesome opportunity to give a presentation on teamwork to one of my customer groups this week. I was absolutely thrilled. It gave me the chance to share the type of material that I’ve been writing about with a live audience for the first time. The speech was 20 minutes long and I’ve cut it into 3 parts for easy viewing. I’m very proud of this one, hope you enjoy. Read the rest of this entry
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Interviewing: Inside the Interview
This is the final article in my four-part series on prepping yourself for success in the interview process. So far we’ve talked about making a good first impression, showing your readiness in the daily grind and developing your examples. I want to finish up by discussing the interview itself and ways to show that you are the best candidate for the job.
In fact, that’s exactly where we’ll begin. When I interview prospective candidates I’ve noticed that many of them seem to forget why they are there in the first place. Some candidates seem determined to show that they are the smartest person that I’ll talk to or that they have the most experience. Others seem to get caught up in the process of answering questions, as if the goal of the interview is having an answer to all of the questions. If you go into the interview with the wrong idea of what you are trying to accomplish you are putting yourself at an extreme disadvantage. When you are being interviewed you should have only one goal in mind – to show that you are the best person for the job. Read the rest of this entry
